Monarch is a British airline based out of London Luton Airport in southern England. In started offering charter flights to European vacation spots. Schedule service, where passengers could book their own flights began in 1986, and the company offered direct routes to Spanish resorts. As the company grew, it offered more routes to Spain and other parts of Europe and it changed its pricing fee to allow passengers to buy inexpensive one way trips versus the traditional round trip option. Monarch has a 16 airline fleet and serves more than six million passengers annually.
United Kingdom based, Thomson Airways started in 1962 as Euravia. It subsequently changed its name to Britannia Airways. It merged with Orion Airways, another United Kingdom based airline and changed its name again, to ThomsonFly. It became Thomson Airways in 2008. The airline is based at Luton Airport, and flies to more than 80 destinations around the world with its fleet of more than 75 planes.
Another Luton, England-based budget airline is 16 year old EasyJet. Four years after its first flight took off, in 1999, the company was named the "Best Low Cost Airline" by readers of the "Business Traveler" magazine. It is the first time in what will be ten consecutive years. The company acquired TEA Basel, Go and GB Airways as it expanded its operations. EasyJet offers more than 500 routes to locations around the world and serves almost 50 million flyers.
While not commonly thought of as a true low cost carrier, Dublin Ireland based Are Lingus competes with them. RyanAir was started in 1936 as a government owned airline and eventually became a public entity in 2006 -- the company is listed on the Irish and London Stock Exchanges. The airline offers regional and long haul flights between Ireland, the United States, using partners, JetBlue Airways and United, the United Kingdom and Europe, with partners KLM and British Airways. Aer Lingus has a fleet size of 41, all of which are made by Airbus.
